NBA: Loss of Rajon Rondo, Jared Sullinger could be net gain for Celtics

Sunday

Feb 3, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Bill Doyle NBA

After the Celtics realized last Sunday that Rajon Rondo would be lost for the rest of the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, coach Doc Rivers refused to give up on his team.

“You can write the obituary,” Rivers said. “I’m not.”

No one asked him if he was ready to dictate the obit after rookie Jared Sullinger underwent season-ending back surgery Friday, but any faint, lingering hopes that Boston could return to the Eastern Conference finals died that day. Losing two starters in the same week is too much to overcome for a team that had underachieved even when it was healthy.

But that doesn’t mean the Celtics won’t be worth watching over the second half of the season. In fact, injuries to Rondo and Sullinger could turn the Celtics from an aging team that failed to live up to its promise into a scrappy, overachieving crew.

Kevin Garnett refuses to consider losing an option.

“We have a lot of fight in us,” Garnett said. “Although Doc made his bull-(bleep) comments about us being soft (earlier this season), we’re a team that will fight and we are a team (that is) very competitive and we’re very prideful. So, when you lose pieces and you lose certain things about your team, you learn within each other and see the fight within each other and follow that.”

The Celtics will have to overcome the losses of Rondo and Sullinger with hustle, and every victory will be a cause for celebration, no matter the opponent.

If this team somehow won a playoff series and played deep into a second one, most Celtics fans would be satisfied. The same wouldn’t have been true if Rondo and Sullinger were still playing. Remember that when the season began Boston was considered to be the team with the best shot of knocking off Miami in the conference finals.

Danny Ainge re-signed Garnett last summer to give the Celtics one last shot at winning a title this season before KG and Paul Pierce grew too old. That must be why he decided to take a chance on drafting Sullinger with the 21st pick in June.

Sullinger was considered a lottery pick before an MRI revealed a degenerative back condition that scared off teams drafting ahead of Boston. The Celtics figured it was worth the risk of drafting Sullinger even if he lasted for only one season before surgery was needed. Unfortunately, he lasted only half of one.

While the Celtics hope surgery to his lumbar disc will eliminate his pain, the thought across the NBA is that other back issues will plague Sullinger throughout his career and will probably shorten it.

The Celtics should move the ball better without Rondo, who had the ball in his hands for much of each possession before finding an open man. They swung the ball well while totaling 22 assists Wednesday against Sacramento and 30 against Orlando on Friday.

Jason Terry and Brandon Bass already have benefited from the increased ball movement.

With Courtney Lee replacing Rondo in the backcourt, the Celtics also should play tougher defense. Too often this season, opposing point guards blew past Rondo to the basket. After Avery Bradley returned from double shoulder surgery, he usually guarded the toughest opposing guard. But for some reason, Rondo guarded Kyrie Irving a couple of weeks ago and the Cleveland guard burned him for 40 points.

Rondo comes up with a lot of steals, but he doesn’t stay in front of his man. He’s no longer the defender who was voted NBA All-Defensive first team in 2010 and 2011, second team in 2009, and third team last season.

But even though the Celtics should move the ball better and play tougher defense without Rondo, they’re a much stronger team with him. Rondo played his best in the biggest games, especially the playoffs. Lee and Bradley may have their shining moments, but Rondo could be counted on when the pressure mounted.

“Your superstars win the tough, close games for you,” Sacramento coach Keith Smart said after his Kings played the Celtics, without Rondo, Wednesday, “and that’s what you’ll miss with Rondo, a guy who can control the basketball when the game is really tight against a heavy-hitting opponent.”

The Celtics will miss Rondo’s league-leading 11.1 assists per game. Even though he played in only 38 games, his 420 assists could end up leading the team. Pierce is a distant second with 185.

The Celtics, who rank next-to-last in the NBA in rebounding, will miss Rondo’s 5.6 rebounds and Sullinger’s 5.9 boards sorely. Sullinger had grabbed more than twice as many offensive rebounds as any other Celtic.

Boston doesn’t have another pure point guard on the roster — most NBA teams don’t have more than one — but it does have a lot of guards. The signing of Leandro Barbosa last October turned out to be a wise move. Lee, Bradley, Terry and Barbosa should combine for enough points and defense while Pierce will provide more of the playmaking.

Rivers admitted winging it during Friday’s win over Orlando. During a timeout, Terry and Barbosa kept asking what plays they were going to run.

“I have no idea,” Rivers responded. “Just go out and space the floor and play, and play through it. And I think Jason loves to play that way. I think LB clearly likes to play that way, and they just read each other extremely well.”

With Garnett sidelined by a knee injury, the Celtics managed to go 15-7 in the latter part of the 2008-09 season and reached Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals against Orlando.

Injuries to Rondo and Sullinger likely will end any inclination Ainge had of making a major move before the Feb. 21 trade deadline. It would have made sense to swing a deal if Ainge thought it would vault the Celtics into the NBA Finals, but that’s an unrealistic goal now.

Don’t expect Ainge to start the rebuilding process by dealing Pierce or Garnett for younger players because the Celtics would have to take back just as much in salary. With only 11 healthy players, Ainge will have to add to the bench, but chances are the Celtics will have to be content with scratching out as many victories as they can with their current nucleus.

Rivers seems to be friends with just about everyone in the NBA, but even though he used to coach Orlando and still lives there in the offseason, he admitted Friday that he doesn’t know Magic general manager Rob Hennigan very well. Told that Hennigan was from Worcester, Rivers replied with a laugh, “Worcester — tell them to dry that floor.”

Rivers was referring to the Celtics’ preseason game in October 2007 at the DCU Center that had to be canceled at halftime because the ice under the basketball floor melted and made the court too slippery.

Injuries to Rondo and Sullinger probably ended any chance the Celtics had of acquiring center DeMarcus Cousins from the Kings, and that may be not such a bad thing.

Cousins, 22, is a talented but immature player who is not easy to coach. Paul Westphal was fired as Kings coach on Jan. 5, 2012, four days after he sent Cousins home for disciplinary reasons. Smart, who took over for Westphal, suspended Cousins in December for “unprofessional behavior and conduct detrimental to the team.”

The reason the Kings put up with his immaturity is he’s 6-foot-10, 270 pounds and leads the team in scoring (17.2) and rebounding (10.1).

“The guy handles the ball like a guard,” Smart said. “He’s got a good jump shot. His post-up game is developing. I think as he develops, that will put him in a position where he can be counted on every night as a go-to guy.”

Smart insisted Wednesday when the Kings were in Boston that coaching Cousins wasn’t as difficult as people think.

“You look back in the history of this league,” Smart said, “and you look at all the very, very talented young players and they have some little issues, but issues that are controllable. For me, it’s not a hard thing.”

Smart admitted that like his own 16-year-old son, Cousins doesn’t always listen. But with his job security in mind, Smart lived up to his name and wouldn’t even admit it was a challenge to coach Cousins.

Smart expects him to mature at some point.

“Once it kicks in,” Cousins said, “then we’re going to have a real special player in our league and on our team, but we have to deal with some of the things that pop up.”

Smart, a 6-foot-1 guard, hit the winning shot for Indiana in the 1987 NCAA championship game against Syracuse, but his entire NBA playing career consisted of only two games for San Antonio in the 1988-89 season. Smart played in the minor leagues and overseas for a decade, including the summer of 1989 with the Worcester Counts of the former World Basketball League for players 6-foot-5 and under.

“I enjoyed my time in Worcester,” he said. “It kept me in really good shape because I went from there to camp and came pretty close to making it with an NBA team in Minnesota. But then I got caught up in a contract deal again. They weren’t eating contracts back then.”

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15